Re: [fetchmail-users] Dangerous bug: losing messages into nowhere

[Rob M. <rob...@gm...>]

On 4/15/07, Antonio Capanna <pir...@ya...> wrote:
<---SNIP--->
> Another possibility is to delete it from the server but save it
> somewhere else.
>
> What do you think?

Some time back (last year probably) this topic came up and one
suggestion was that malformed messages should be stuck inside a
text/plain message part and forwarded to the postmaster.

The main reason being that fetchmail can't guarantee to identify
what's wrong (the last thread was related to there being no blank line
separating the headers from the body).  By forwarding the entire
broken message to the postmaster then the postmaster can at least
decide what to do.

Note though that your local SMTP server would likely have refused
these messages, probably with a permanent failure due to their being
malformed.  This would then have resulted in fetchmail deleting them,
so effectively fetchmail just cut the SMTP server out of the decision
loop :>  (Neither is an ideal situation though, I agree)

-- 
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Rob MacGregor
      Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he
        doesn't become a monster.                  Friedrich Nietzsche